John Walker's Electronic House

People may be interested to have a look at page 11 of the new Private Eye (ish 1201).

The original obit to Greening is here, my comments on the emails are here.

It’s Christmas time! That can only mean one thing: I’m going on about how annoyed I am with people’s whining about “the true meaning of Christmas being eroded”. It’s an annual event, but despite my righteous truth on the matter, the same tripe is trawled out by those poor hard-done-by, white, middle class Christians.

I’m convinced I’ve ranted about this here before, but a search can’t find any evidence. So if I’m repeating myself, well, welcome to me.

Christmas is just about the least important moment in the Christian calendar, and the more commercial it gets, the better. I LOVE that Christmas is commercial.

The second part first. Imagine if Christmas weren’t commercial. Imagine if it were as you can only imagine those flapping their wings at this time of year wish it were: Church, then lunch. Weeeeee.

Christmas is about one thing and one thing alone: presents. We can lie to ourselves and others as much as we like about it being about the Baby Jesus, but good heavens to betsy, no it’s not. It’s about getting and giving presents, and all the fun and danger that involves. Remove the presents and no one would bother with the day any more than they do Pentecost or Ash Wednesday.

Then add in the decorations in the shops. Sure, it’s annoying to see them in September, but it’s bloody brilliant to see them in December. Everywhere looks so fun and tacky, gaudy tinsel and colourful flashing lights brightening up a dreary shopping precinct. Just look at the shops in January, or your own home come the day you take the decorations down. Suddenly everything is drab and ordinary, that brief frolick with tasteless abandon a memory. All thanks to the commercial nature of Christmas. Throw in Christmas crap on the TV, the non-stop joy for children of Father Christmas/Santa Claus, the fun of reindeers and a Charlie Brown special. All and all and all because Christmas is so gloriously commercial. Amen to that. Don’t you dare ruin my Christmas with your religion.

So talking of religion – just exactly what role does Christmas play in the Christian story?

Well, one that’s of so little import that two out of four Gospels don’t even bother to mention it.

You know where Mark and John begin? With John the Baptist, and Jesus’ baptism. Because that is the beginning of the Christian story. Matthew gives Jesus’ birth a cursory paragraph, and while Luke spends a little longer describing the events, he spends about as long discussing those of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and the birth of John.

And as we all surely know by now, the Bible never mentions a donkey, a stable, lowing cattle, and certainly no three kings. (There are an unknown number of magi who visit Jesus about two years later). Sorry, nativity fans.

So these politicians, who disappear up their own ballot boxes whinging that a local predominantly Muslim school isn’t putting on a nativity play, start to look pretty damned stupid. If you’re going to fight for your faith, perhaps take a brief glance at the faith for which you think you’re fighting.

Even if you do think these events that two Gospels mention – one in passing – is of so much importance… how exactly? What are we supposed to be celebrating? According to the twenty or so tedious carols dragged out every year, we are celebrating the arrival of our Lord on Earth. But are we? What we’re celebrating is the arrival of a barely sentient bundle of organs that poos and cries (despite the protestations of Away In A Manger, I think we can assume the infant Christ cried much like regular babies). And yes, I’m not stupid – I’m aware that Christ’s existence as a human is reliant on his having been born. But I just don’t think this inevitably necessary occasion should quite be the centre-point of the Christian world. I’d say it’s a pretty minor event when compared to those that followed.

If we wish to celebrate the beginning of Christ, we should celebrate his baptism – a moment of sheer wonder, so beautifully told by Mark in his rushed, over-excited way.

And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.’ (Mark 1: 10-11)

That is the moment of wonder that should stop every Christian in her or his tracks, drop everything and simply worship in joy. That is the distraction from the commercial, from the worldly. It’s the beginning of the Christ, of the holy spirit on Earth, of our human relationship with God.

One story is life-beginning. A crucial part of our understanding of Jesus as fully human. But the other story is life-changing, and so fundamental to Christianity.

I could more easily argue that perhaps Christians might want to focus their efforts and energy into Easter – the most crucial and transformational moment in all of Christianity. You would think that all these people who get so furious about their precious Christmas being spoilt by fun and happiness might more usefully channel it into having Easter even be noticed, beyond getting some extra chocolate.

Everyone knows that Christians stole pagan festivals for Christmas and Easter. It seems the world has reclaimed Christmas, and I think the gracious and graceful response is to accept this, and indeed embrace it. (Only Christians would make a massive fuss because too many people were celebrating their holiday). Because Christmas doesn’t matter very much, compared to so much else that I never hear these angry campaigners even allude to.

A quick side-story. I was ranting about this in Waitrose a couple of years back, to my friend Sian. “Everyone keeps yelling that we’ve forgotten the ‘true meaning of Christmas’!” I complained, probably waving my arms around in frustration. “But no one, when I ask them, can tell me what this true meaning is!” The lady behind the till looked up and said, “Well, it’s about new hope, isn’t it?” Which stopped me in my tracks. And yes, I think it is. It’s about hope. And we can hope at Christmas, while surrounded by presents and festivities and trees and huge meals and bad TV and decorations and the abundance of things that have nothing to do with Christianity.

Merry Winterval everybody!

Tim pointed me to this fantastically stupid article in the Guardian.

It’s a response from hippy charlatan Denis MacEoin to Ben Goldacre’s extended piece providing all the arguments and evidence one needs for dealing with the murderous witchdoctors in the homeopathic practice. And it’s a supremely silly and wonderfully idiotic attack.

Lines accusing Goldacre like, “he paraded his superior knowledge,” are a thing of joy. How dare he! How dare he prove he is an expert in a subject?! These people with their superior knowledge, pointing out that my pile of lies practise is a pile of lies! He must be stopped!

He then goes on to announce that Goldacre clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he is, “sure he has not acquired any homeopathic qualifications, and I’m confident he has not sat in with an experienced homeopath for a year or so or worked at a homeopathic NHS hospital.” Excellent work Dr MacEmptyhead! It’s impossible to criticise homeopathy unless you are a homeopath, working for a homeopathic “hospital”. Brilliant. So doing massive amounts of research into the subject, following the studies, and most of all, recognising that A BOTTLE OF WATER DOESN’T CURE ANYTHING BUT A SLIGHT THIRST, cannot be enough. You have to be entrenched within the subject of your doubt before you will be heard by these stubborn morons.

And of course MacEoin then trots out that homeopath favourite: it’s impossible to test homeopathy by scientific means. Regular tests for medicine can’t work on homeopathic snake oil, because homeopathic snake oil isn’t like other medicines! Even though a homeopath will state that a bottle of their expensive tap water, taken five times a day for a week, will cure you of your ailments, at the moment someone wants to test this, it’s suddenly something that takes months and years to work, and requires thousands of different bottles of tap water. Oddly the follow-up to this is never, “So we’ll have to devise a double-blind, peer-reviewed test based on these criteria.” It is instead to just sort of stop, in the cute belief that if they obfuscate the rules enough, it will bewilder those sciency nerds and their “superior knowledge”, and they’ll just have to accept it works.

He then spits in disgust that Goldacre would be so stupid as to think scientific rationale is appropriate for homeopathy.

He must know something as elementary as this about homeopathy, yet he puts up an Aunt Sally, “proves” homeopathy does not work, and calls all homeopaths “morons”. This is not science, and as someone who believes strongly in science, I would challenge the good doctor to prove that his vaunted trials had anything to do with homeopathy at all.

Yeah Ben! It’s elementary, you big old thicko! Don’t you even know that?! Duhhhh! Cor Ben, I bet you feel a bit stupid now, madly treating homeopathy with the dignity that it could be scientifically measured. MacMoron continues,

“It would be to his credit to come clean on this and to help design trials that would match the homeopathic way of prescribing. If he isn’t willing to do that in collaboration with homeopathic doctors who know as much as he does about the science and are not morons, he is demeaning the very notion of scientific medicine.”

That’s right – the one thing Ben Goldacre has refused to do is offer a rational scientific process for fairly measuring the efficacy of homeopathy by homeopathy’s own rules. Oh no wait. He did exactly that in the piece to which MacEieio was so angrily replying. Goldacre devised criteria for a test that would take into account the ridiculous charade of months of homeopathic consultations, and twelfty different potions. How very, very odd that MacBlind missed this bit, and wasn’t able to recognise it in his response. A more cynical person would suggest that he’s a deceitful conman, purporting his witchcraft bullshit for financial gain, terrified when someone writes a rational and reasoned piece demonstrating how his “medicine” is an utter fabrication.

When these are the people who puff their chests out and declare, “I’m a sceptic too! I believe in the importance of science too!”, when these are the best and most scientific that homeopathy has to offer, the ridiculous charade becomes only more apparent. Or at least you’d think it would. But instead the NHS is investing vast sums of UK tax payers’ money into researching this utter drivel. In fact, I find it frankly insulting that money is being spent on tests for the idiotic parade when it’s literally BOTTLES OF WATER being sold. What has happened? How has the NHS of all things reached this point of giving even vague credence, let along swathes of money and dedicated hospitals, to the most obvious and blatent of con tricks?

Hello, the NHS please. Hi, I’ve invented a cure for all diseases. It involves having me kiss the person better. It definitely works, because I say so really very firmly. Could you spent millions of pounds wasting money on investigating this please, rather than spending it on your collapsing hospital infrastructure? Thanks!

PS. This tragic story from Australia should shed some perspective for those in any doubt.

Homeopaths are not content with trying to sue people who report their desires to murder people with malaria – now they’re going to cure AIDS too.

This latest attempt at genocide through expensive ignorance is being led by one Peter Chappell, who will be heading a conference held by the The Society of Homeopaths, called the “HIV/AIDS Symposium”. This vile human being is claiming,

“Right now AIDS in Africa could be significantly ameliorated by a simple tune played on the radio across Africa. Or there is a slower solution using pills, and drops that works very well, but is harder to deliver.”

As homeopathy frantically tries to throw around medical terms, and skews study results in desperate attempts to reveal a glimmer of hope that a bottle of water could be more powerful than, er, a bottle of water they didn’t put a label on, morons like this at the head of their organisation make the entire thing more of a laughing stock than it already is.

But more seriously, this piece of excrement is claiming that playing a song can significantly improve the AIDS epidemic – a hateful deception that could potentially kill untold numbers of the desperately hopeful.

Perhaps he is simply ignorant, you might say. His actions are not evil, but naive. But no such claim can be made. His own site states,

“While we have no proof in scientific terms that the AIDS treatment is effective, in practice it is very reliable and thousands of people have recovered and we supply this treatment FREE through the Amma Resonance Healing Foundation.”

He KNOWS it does not work. And obviously the Amma Resonance Healing Foundation present all their data on this subject? Oh, they don’t. They have nothing but their own studies, apparently published only in homeopathy pamphlets and not on their site, and the statement, “We are now in the process of building hard science based results to consolidate this new technology for the benefit of humanity.” Well, they started this in 2006, and oddly enough, results have yet to emerge.

For those who still hold on to the belief that there is some possibility that homeopathy does anything beyond sell lies to the sick, the wonderful Ben Goldacre has written the definitive article on the subject, addressing all the various wriggles homeopaths attempt to use when explaining why every accurate study reveals it to do nothing over placebo. It’s a wonderful read. A favourite moment:

Many people confuse homeopathy with herbalism and do not realise just how far homeopathic remedies are diluted. The typical dilution is called “30C”: this means that the original substance has been diluted by 1 drop in 100, 30 times. On the Society of Homeopaths site, in their “What is homeopathy?” section, they say that “30C contains less than 1 part per million of the original substance.”

This is an understatement: a 30C homeopathic preparation is a dilution of 1 in 100^30, or rather 1 in 10^60, which means a 1 followed by 60 zeroes, or – let’s be absolutely clear – a dilution of 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000.

To phrase that in the Society of Homeopaths’ terms, we should say: “30C contains less than one part per million million million million million million million million million million of the original substance.”

At a homeopathic dilution of 100C, which they sell routinely, and which homeopaths claim is even more powerful than 30C, the treating substance is diluted by more than the total number of atoms in the universe. Homeopathy was invented before we knew what atoms were, or how many there are, or how big they are. It has not changed its belief system in light of this information.

Everyone in the entire world, with the single exception of me, is STUPID. And I’ve had enough. If you all don’t stop it right away, I’m going to start killing you.

First of all, this has really pissed me off. Originally announced in May, and included in the year’s round-up of things the BBC website staff didn’t know (I’m still looking forward to the appearance of the correct use of “its” and “it’s”), it’s SOMETHING I FIGURED OUT WHEN I WAS A CHILD. All these pathetic questions that people ask rhetorically when trying to announce the unanswerable nature of life’s mysteries make me so damn cross. There’s not a single one in common use for which the answer isn’t perfectly obvious and easily discovered. “Why is grass green?!” Because chlorophyll doesn’t absorb the green region of sunlight, you vacuous cretin. And included amongst these moronic platitudes is, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” As a child, I stopped when asked this, and replied, “Well, it will be the egg, cos whatever evolved into a chicken would have laid an egg that was the first chicken.” And now I read that this May, twenty years later, this is some sort of bloody scientific revelation, announced to the world by leading experts? And worse, the BBC responded to these gits trying to garner limelight for themselves by stating the achingly obvious with coverage, surprise, and even an inclusion in the end-of-year compilation? DO BETTER. Everyone, for crying out loud, take a look at yourselves and DO BETTER.

More frequently driving me to crazed distraction (and blimey is it hard to maintain a head of fury while listening to The Album Leaf) are people who WILL NOT THINK WHEN TALKING. Nothing makes me shout more loudly than Radio 4’s Any Answers. Following the generally dreadful Any Questions (Question Time on the radio, television plebs), it’s an opportunity for listeners to phone in and offer their own unique perspectives on the issues discussed. Oh wait, sorry, typo. Offer the same idiotic drivel they read in the editorial of the Daily Fuckwit last week, before having it confirmed by a squawking chav interviewed on Sky Bloody News. Never, EVER do they listen to bumbling twit Jonathan “I’m Not As Useless As My Brother” Dimbleby, as he attempts to ask them to provide some thinking behind their trumpeted bile, but instead they press a giant red reset button on their forehead and repeat what they’ve already said, only adding in some fresh new racism. These ghastly insults to oxygen are the lowest form of human life. I’d rather sit down to eat with a member of the Taleban than any single caller to that programme. Why do I listen, you ask? Because somehow, no matter what time I go into the kitchen to make food on a Saturday, it’s always 2.05pm by the time I’m in there. This same mystical blackhole chooses 2pm and 7pm on weekdays to make sure I catch the sodding Archers at least once a day. If I go too early in the morning for it to get away with warping ahead to after two, then it will make sure it’s 10.20am so I get the most awful part of Women’s Hour.

I’m sure my neighbours have considered calling the police, thinking that I’m horribly abusing a spouse or something, as I scream in rage, “YOU DISGUSTING COW, DIE OF RABIES RIGHT NOW,” or similar, at some broken glass-voiced old Daily Mail-reading bitch proclaiming the “coloured people” are stealing our jobs.

Anyway, the point of all this was to despair at the comments that have appeared beneath my obit to Mike Dicken. I thought, seeing that he was dead and all, it would be a good and decent thing to write something honest about him, as his relatively low profile would mean little media coverage. But obituraries make me furious, as they’re simply cowardly lying. Dicken was an arsehole in many respects, and I think such things should be remembered. But despite this, and despite there being an appropriate place for whiny sentimental tributes on the station’s website, somehow my comments section is filled with barely readable nonsense about how he – nrrgghhhhh – “spoke for us all”.

NO HE BLOODY WELL DIDN’T.

He spoke for stupid people who think that their majority stupid opinions are being oppressed, because their six million selling newspaper tells them that no one’s being allowed to say the thing they’re saying to six million people (along with five other six million selling newspapers) because of the oppressive liberals and their politically correct agendas. These gutwanks read this and are aghast. “No one’s allowed to say this thing that I’ve just read in this national newspaper, and indeed any number of other newspapers?! What can be done about this?!” And then later that night when their hoary old radio presenter lazily reads out the story from the Shithead On Sunday, they think, “God be praised! This single man was brave enough to stand up to the legions of LEFTY PINKO NAZIS who are preventing everyone else in the whole world from daring to utter such secret and radical truths.” And from this the champion is born, the Chosen One risking his life to state the opinions of The Oppressed Man On The Street. I’ve said what I have to say about Dicken, and I did secretly like him, but I cannot cope with the sanctimonious drivel being posted beneath it. Why are you people reading this? Did someone link to it or something? Please, go, run away.

So I went shopping today. And yes, I realise this was a bit bloody stupid of me. But it really confirmed the excellent reasons why I should never be allowed to carry a weapon. Ipswich would be forgotten after the trail of dead I would have left in my wake this afternoon. Look, I know I’ve gone on about this before, but for THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND PURE, am I really the only person in the world who makes an effort to be conscious of who is in front, to the sides, and behind me at all times? Answer: Yes. Yes I am. The only one. I now have no hesitation before growling loudly at people who stop dead in the middle of the street for NO GODDAMN REASON. And I mean growling. There’s no better release for the circumstance, and no better reaction from the selfish bastards who do it. But blimey, did I snarl a lot today.

Every now and then you catch someone who at least understands. Stood behind a group of four who were blocking the entire pavement and standing dead still, I raised my bags of shopping and brandished them as a weapon at their hateful heads. Across the street a dad with kids saw and laughed understandingly. He might live.

Sales appear to bring out the very worst of human kind. It was as if all the inmates of Britain’s prison hospitals were having a day out in your Beautiful Bath, released from their shackles for one afternoon only. Everyone shuffled painfully slowly, like bad extras from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, no one trying to do anything or get anywhere. I wouldn’t have been even vaguely surprised if they were just slowly stepping backwards on escalators, ensuring their mindless trudging was as purposeless as could be. I despaired for humanity while shopping for jumpers today. Please, everyone, go back to work. I want my town back.

Is the name of the forthcoming Fox TV programme, in which O.J. Simpson hypothetically describes how he would have killed his wife, if he had done it.

It’s hard to know what to add.

Television news disgusts me. With the exception of a very occasional unmuzzling of Newsnight, or the enormously rare moments where Channel 4 News defies its ITV News roots and finds its balls, the UK has nothing but worthless parroting of speeches and press releases instead of news. There was a time when an “investigative journalist” was a part of news reporting, where demonstrable untruths were revealed with evidence, and facts were scrutinised before being reported. There was once the opportunity for comment, now replaced by a wantonly ignorant desperation to present a woeful misunderstanding of avoiding bias. Everything goes unchallenged, blindly repeated to the camera, because to question is to be biased, to enquire is to be partisan. Television news is the worthless funnelling of that day’s bullshit, presented in an easy to digest half-hour mouthful, unquestioning, unaccountable, and utterly undemanding.

But at least we can sneer at the Americans, eh? At least there’s Fox News to reassure us that at least we’re not as bad as them. Don’t kid yourself. Sky News is one rung away from its American sister station, ITV News is a pitiful laughing-stock with only months to live (the ghost of ITN unheard), and BBC News so more dangerous for its veneer of respectability, while almost entirely without merit.

And the sneering is even less valid, because there’s one news journalist left, and he’s in America. In fact, in the most peculiar twist, he’s on the wretched MSNBC. Keith Olbermann’s news programme, Countdown W/ Keith Olbermann, reports the reality of the day’s news, with a crew of investigative reporters given room to say what they saw and heard themselves, rather than repeat the released statements presented to them. And Olbermann, with his own set of biases and agenda, is given space to comment. Because that’s how it’s meant to be done.

Perhaps after watching the clips below, the easiest (laziest) response is to announce he is merely an anti-Bush equivalent of Fox News. I can only appeal that you seek out as many clips of Countdown (yes, how amusing that it has the same name as the Channel 4 quiz, well done) as you are able, and witness the same vehemence and passion put into revealing the lies and deceptions of the Left as well.

Yes, this is John going on about someone/thing no one else has ever heard of or cared about. But be sure that on this occasion at least, my passion is valid.

Olbermann, as I’ve said before, signs off saying, “Good night, and good luck” (and occasionally, “Keep your knees loose, America”), and I want to quote this moment specifically:

“Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

And so good night, and good luck.”

I think transport hates me.

Last night, coming back from a day in Guildford, my train to Reading was displayed on the board with the ominous claim that it would be 2 minutes late. I have detected a pattern when such short delays are displayed: they are lies. After a couple of minutes it was 3 minutes, and then 5, then 7. At one point there was a pre-recorded tannoy announcement that went, without pause:

“Passengers waiting for the ..21.13 train to ..Reading on platform ..8. We regret to announce that this service is running approximately ..seven minutes late. Passengers waiting for the ..21.13 train to ..Reading on platform ..8. We regret to announce that this service is running approximately ..eight minutes late. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

The delay was building up faster than they could announce it. We were then told that there was a platform alteration, and to head to platform 6, where the much delayed train to Redhill was sat. Our train then arrived at 21.30 (I was increasingly unlikely to make my connection in Reading at this point, and increasingly frustrated), and we got on board. It didn’t move. At 21.42 we were told to get off the train and go to platform 8 and get the 21.43 to Reading instead. Waiting on platform 8 again, we were then told to get back onto the train on platform 6. I asked which would be faster. The man replied, “The 21.43 is the faster train to Reading. It will be leaving after the 21.13 though, following it to Reading.” I replied, “If the 21.43 is to go faster than the 21.13, and go behind it, then there’s going to be a terrible crash.” Another man in a white shirt with a badge glared at me and snapped, “There isn’t going to be a 21.43 OKAY? This train [he points angrily to the one on platform 6] is knackered. The other train’s going to push this one there!”

Oh, silly old me! How dare I have not known that this would be the case after being told to change platforms four times in 15 minutes?! The train eventually left about 22.00, meaning I was to be missing even the following train to Bath. Which was, of course, delayed by 7 minu… 15 minut… 23 minutes.

And it was all because: the trains were too hot. Not designed to run in snow or rain or leafy conditions, the trains are also not designed for sunny weather. I am looking forward to, “We apologise for the delay. This is due to the overly mild conditions.”

Dear Virgin Atlantic,

I am writing regarding the flight VS019 on the 11th July 2006. Yes, that one.

I understand the flight has already entered legend amongst your staff. This letter should come as little surprise.

Due to leave at 11.00, we were boarded promptly after 10.30, and I took my seat in the economy section. While your airline is by far the best in terms of in-flight entertainment, food and service for the economy flier, it is of course one of the least generous with regards to seat space, and as such we were all squeezed into our narrow gaps and awaited the rather daunting prospect of an 11 hour flight to San Francisco.

The captain came on the tannoy to announce that there would be a “three minute delay” as we waited for a space in which to take off.

Half an hour later the captain decided he might as well say something else. There was a problem with the plane. They would get back to us with more information very soon.

Half an hour later we were once more considered worthy of being spoken to. We’d been on board for an hour and a half now, and had only taxied a few hundred yards. It didn’t feel well enough on our way to receive so little information. The engineers need to take us back to a gate to check the plane. We were soon being towed back to where we started.

Roughly another half hour passed, and we were then told that the engineers would be back with an estimate in “ten to fifteen minutes”.

Fourty-five minutes later the captain found time in his busy schedule to give an announcement. It was a problem with the hydraulics. It would take between three to four hours to fix. We would have to leave the plane. It was, by this point, 13.15. Buses were on their way.

The buses arrived to pick us up at 16.15.

At no point was an explanation given. In fact, at one point two hours went past without an announcement. The cabin crew said they knew nothing, which appeared true. That the door to the plane was open from 13.15 onward would suggest that at any point any member of the plane’s crew could have escaped to seek explanation. Oh, and the plane’s air conditioning broke at about 13.30.

By 15.00, having been on the plane for four hours, the personal air blowers began to blow only hot air. It was extremely hot on the plane. Fortunately at this point it occurred to the crew to offer us water. No food, of course, because it was needed for the flight, and where on earth would they find more aeroplane food at an airport?!

After a number of passengers suggested that they might want to turn on the in-flight entertainment if we weren’t going to be either flying or getting off the plane, it was announced that they would! Hooray! At least we could watch one of the 50 movies or many television programmes to pass the time… No, of course not. Only the Virgin promotional travel programme was put on. I believe SEVEN times in a row.

I think it might have been at around 15.00 that we were told we’d be receiving vouchers for when (if) we got back to the terminal with which we could get meals. We were told by the cabin crew at one point that the ground staff had told them the delay was due to their needing to print out the vouchers. They arrived, soon after 16.00, handed out one by one by a total of two people. They were hand written. And for an astonishing £10. Have you ever bought a meal in an airport? No, I didn’t think so.

Once we had received our scrap of paper with “£10” scrawled on it, we were released onto the buses. They took us back to the departure terminal… No of course they didn’t! They took all 450 of us to a line for a baggage check in a corridor with no ventilation or air conditioning! That’s right – a baggage check! Because while on the plane, about a third of the passengers had been fashioning knives and bombs from toilet tissue and in-flight entertainment magazines, and a decent proportion of them could easily have finished. Well, that line only lasted about 45 minutes, and once our bags had been rechecked for all improvised WMDs, we were let loose to splash out on ten pounds of food. Two sandwiches and a cup of coffee later I laid back satiated… Sorry, I mean, wandered around aimlessly, hot and miserable and so frustrated at the appalling lack of information. After a couple of hours I thought to go to the Virgin information desk to see if anything was known.

“Gate 25.”
“But there’s nothing on the board.”
“Gate 25.”
“When will it take off?”
“When everyone gets on.”
“But it’s not on the board!”
“Gate 25.”

I check the board, but it was not there. I told people I recognised from our earlier five and a half hours sat on the plane the news, and the rest of my party, and made my way to Gate 25 where I informed the staff that they had failed to TELL ANYONE THAT THE SODDING FLIGHT WAS READY. They put it on the boards. We filled the plane.

“We apologise for the delay, and any inconvenience this might have caused,” read the new captain off his piece of paper.

The entire plane joined in a chorus of disgusted laughter and booing.

Ten and a half hours later we arrived in San Francisco, nine hours late.

Yours sincerely,
John Walker

Dear the Ibis Hotel, Heathrow,

Burn yourself down.

I was recently unfortunate enough to stay for a night at your “hotel” without even having committed a crime. Despite the immediately pleasant appearance of your foyer, this illusion was immediately shattered by the inability of the person stationed at the check-in desk to speak English. Please don’t mistake me for one of those repulsive individuals who demands that everyone be fluent in English everywhere I go, but I think I can test my liberal nature to the point of wanting someone whose job it is to speak to people who walk into the hotel to be able to speak to people who walk into the hotel. After eventually finding someone with whom to exchange rudimentary grunts, I was told that my booking reference was no use to the hotel for finding my booking, and instead had to make phonecalls to people to find entirely extraneous information regarding the booking before my existence would be accepted. (Later, when colleagues arrived, I gave them the secret information for receiving their rooms, only for them to have the booking reference read back to them).

Entering my room, and indeed almost exiting it again in the same step, I was overwhelmed by how the £70/night was being spent. Not only did the room stretch wide enough to accomodate the single bed, but it also had a table! Perched atop the cupboard in the corner was a colour television! There was a bathroom! Really, it was very exciting. Which made it slightly more disappointing to learn that the bed’s mattress was apparently made of wood, the television worked only when physically assaulted (the remote did not work at all), and the bathroom contained no ventilation, no shower curtain, and no seal or division between the bedroom such that the bedroom’s carpet had been merrily absorbing water escaping from the one foot high bath beneath the curtainless shower for many years. And the sink smelt of sewerage. Not a bit stinky, but of sewerage. And the shower gel dispensor on the wall was empty.

I bravely reapproached your front desk (once again getting into the lift that so terrifyingly stopped between floors before violently shuddering and clunking into place) to ask if my television remote could get new batteries, and if the shower gel could be replaced so I could have a shower. I was met once more by the young man whose linguistic skills lay abroad. He was determined, however, and despite not understanding anything I was saying, stuck firm to nodding and looking around in panic. Realising that my only chance of receiving a response was to ask a series of ever-more complicated questions until he was forced to fetch someone else, I executed this beautifully. Speaking to a new person, I was told to go to my room and wait. The conversation went like this (and I promise this is true):

Me: Do I really need to be in my room for this to be done?
Him: Someone will be up with you shortly.
Me: Do I really need to be in my room for someone to replace the shower gel?
Him: Someone will be right up, sir.
Me: I’m asking, do I need to be in the room?
Him: Are you going somewhere?
Me: I was just going to have a drink in the bar. [I point behind me to the bar]
Him: Come and find me when you get back and I’ll send someone up with you.
Me: I’m only asking you to replace the shower gel in my room. Can you do that while I’m in the bar?
Him: When you get back, come and find me and I’ll get someone to help you.
Me: Right. Let’s do it now. I want to get it done now.
Him: Huh?
Me: It’s obviously too complicated. Let’s do this now.
Him: Ok sir, come and find me when you get back.
Me: I’m sorry, where am I GOING?
Him: You said you were going out. [He points toward the entrance]
Me: No. No I didn’t. I said I was going to get a drink at the bar. But now I want to do this right now.
Him: You’re not going out?
Me: No. Never have been. Can we do this now?
Him: Wait there, I’ll get what you need.
[I wait for five minutes. He reappears carrying a remote control and a box containing the device that goes in the gel dispensor]
Him: Do you know how to fit this?
[I was reasonably surprised by this. I don’t really enjoy the weird servant-like nature of maids in hotels. It makes me feel creepy. But I also sort of think that hotels might not expect the guests to do their own maid service when they’re paying £70/night. I should also say, I wasn’t being a prick here. I’d actually thought to try and figure out how to fix the shower gel dispensor for myself earlier, and discovered that I could find no way to open it, even after pulling various parts off]
Me: No. I don’t know how to fit it.
Him: Oh. Well, I’ll come up then.
[He stands still]
[I wait]
[He stands still some more]
Me: So I guess I’ll just do it then.
[He hands me the gel box and the remote]
Him: Have a good evening, sir.

So I take the box upstairs with me, and after another failed attempt to get into the device on the wall, I pathetically operate the gel sachet outside of its protective coating, much like trying to milk a jellyfish. The new remote doesn’t work either.

It was a hot night, and the room, pleasingly, had an air conditioning unit. I switched it on to cool the room, and it began some sort of improvised drumming, banging and clicking, switching itself off and on, faster and slower, all the while thumping and rattling. Leaving it to sing to itself, and hopefully cool the room down, I went to the bar. Returning, the noises it made were still impossibily silly, and so I switched it off in order to attempt sleep. However, it was remarkably hot, and the only window in the room was the double paned box on the wall. I was pleased that someone had at least removed the iron bars that would have obscured access in most other prisons, but there was still an unremovable tie that prevented the internal window from opening more than four inches. The window beyond, another six inches into the wall, was able to open inward as far as the first window would allow, but both were designed to swing shut if left unattended. Fortunately, my improvisionational skills as second to none, and I was able to fashion a device to keep them both open using only the two plastic teaspoons found upon my room’s table.

Of course the reason for the window’s being double-thick was to dull the noise of the airport outside, and it is only reasonable that having them open would allow this disturbance in. It’s perhaps less reasonable that this noise should be more soothing and certainly less loud than the air conditioning unit. After almost two hours’ sleep it was time to get up, and get the hell out.

I promise you I have stayed in more luxurious and comfortable youth hostels. Your hotel is abysmal. As a colleague pointed out, when idiotic tabloid newspapers scream, “PRISONS ARE LIKE A HOTEL”, if they are anything like yours then Amnesty International have far more work on their hands than I had ever realised.

Yours sincerely,

John Walker